4 dead, 15 wounded in New Orleans Memorial Day weekend gun violence

New Orleans' violent Memorial Day weekend continued into the evening Monday (May 26) with police reporting a shooting death in the lower 9th Ward - bringing the toll since Friday night to 19 shot, four of those fatally.

The latest fatal shooting, reported around 6:15 p.m., was near the
intersection of North Johnson and Charbonnet streets. Police said a man
was found on the sidewalk, suffering from multiple gunshot wounds. He
was pronounced dead at the scene.

About 2 hours earlier, a 17-year-old boy died at the hospital
after being shot at the intersection of N. Rocheblave and Eads streets.
Melvin Porter, a retired EMT and area resident, said he administered
CPR to the victim on the sidewalk until EMS arrived. He said the boy
appear to have been shot in the leg, foot and hip.

Earlier in the afternoon, New Orleans police were on the scene of a shooting under the I-10 overpass, at North Claiborne Avenue and Gov. Nicholls Street.

Police said a man was a riding bicycle when a silver Chevy Impala
pulled up. A man got out and began firing, then got back in the car and
fled, according to a NOPD report. The victim had a graze wound to the
face and was shot twice in the shoulder. He was listed in stable
condition.

The victims were sitting in their car at South Johnson and Perdido
streets when another car pulled up alongside them and someone inside
began shooting. A man was shot in the back and two women had graze
wounds on the arm and leg. All are in stable condition. A fourth person
in the car was uninjured.

The New Orleans Police Department reported the incident shortly after 4 a.m.

On Sunday afternoon, three men were shot in Algiers when a man opened fire with an assault rifle in the Fischer development.

That was followed by a shooting in the 7th Ward near Cajun Seafood and a murder Sunday night
in eastern New Orleans. The latter was shot multiple times; he has been
identified but authorities are withholding the name pending
notification of family, coroner spokesman John Gagliano said.

Georgia teen drowns in lake after friends tie him to shopping cart in game

CARTERSVILLE, Ga. -- An 18-year-old drowned just hours after
graduating high school when he was tied to a shopping cart and pushed
into a lake as part of a game with friends, Georgia officials say.

Chance Werner of Cartersville, Ga., died at Lake Allatoona about 35
miles northwest of Atlanta, Georgia Department of Natural Resources
spokeswoman Melissa Cummings said. His body was found early Sunday
morning in about 30 feet of water and he was still tied to the cart.

She says in the game Saturday night, participants sat in a shopping cart that was tied to a pole.

Others pushed the cart to the end of the dock so that the person
sitting in it would be flung into the water. Cummings says the cart was
tied to Werner instead of a pole and it pulled him under. The cart
pulled him into the water and he did not resurface.

Teenager Holds His Breath While Driving in Tunnel, Then Faints and Crashes

A local police officer said that some people hold their breath in tunnels as part of a game or superstition

A 19-year-old man caused a three-car crash in Oregon Sunday when he fainted after holding his breath while driving through a tunnel.

The teenager, Daniel J. Calhon, lost consciousness and control of the
car as he drove through a tunnel close to Portland, the Associated
Press reports.

Some people hold their breaths in tunnels as part of a game or
superstition, State Police Lt. Gregg Hastings told the Associated Press.

Calhon’s car drifted over the centerline and had a head-on collision
with an oncoming vehicle. A pick-up subsequently hit Calhon’s car. Four
people were injured — Calhon and his passenger as well as the two
passengers in the oncoming car — though none of them seriously.

A Metairie man already tied to two purse snatchings investigations has been booked in a third case, accused of breaking a Kenner
woman's arm, wrist and nose in the process. Eric Robertson, 31, was
booked Friday with second-degree robbery and illegal credit card use,
according to Sgt. Brian McGregor, spokesman for the Kenner Police
Department.

Robertson is accused of attacking a 62-year-old woman in the 1000 block of St. Julien Drive in
Kenner on May 4. The woman told officers she was getting out of her
vehicle just before 2 a.m. when a man investigators say was Robertson
grabbed her purse and tried to snatch it away.

But the robber didn't make a clean getaway because the strap was
securely around the woman's shoulder. Instead, he punched the woman
several times in the face, knocked her to the ground and dragged her
across the parking lot by her purse strap, according to an arrest
report.

Although the woman tried to hold on to her purse, the robber
eventually wrestled it free from her grip, breaking her right arm,
fracturing her right wrist and dislocating her shoulder in the process,
McGregor said. Her shoulder required surgery. The woman also suffered a
broken nose, cuts and bruising.

The robber sped off in a tan car occupied by two others, the report
said. Within three hours, someone used the woman's credit card to make a
$96 purchase at a Kenner store.

Kenner investigators reviewed surveillance video footage from the
store and identified two suspects who used the cards. Detectives
identified Robertson as one of the suspects after Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Office investigators tied him to a pair of similar purse snatchings last week, McGregor said.

The Sheriff's Office booked Robertson with two counts of purse
snatching in connection with incidents in the 2700 block of Edenborn
Avenue in Metairie on May 21 and 4100 block of Division Street in
Metairie on May 20.

Kenner Police and Sheriff's Office detectives are still attempting to
identity two suspects spotted on surveillance cameras with Robertson
when the victims' cards were used. The agencies have released
photographs of each suspect.

Robertson, of 4021 Hessmer Ave., Metairie, was still being held
Tuesday (May 27) at the Jefferson Parish Correctional Center in Gretna
on a $136,000 bond, McGregor said.

New details emerge in Jaren Lockhart's murder and dismemberment case

Detectives investigating the murder and dismemberment of Bourbon Street dancer Jaren Lockhart say two federal inmates in New York provided information that helped them link the crime to a Kenner couple, according to testimony Tuesday.

That information in large part was used by the Kenner Police Department earlier this month to book Margaret Sanchez,
30, with second-degree murder and obstruction of justice in the
two-year-old murder investigation. Sanchez was arrested May 7, at her
parents' home in Metairie.

Sanchez, a petite woman whose short brown hair reveals a tattoo of a dragonfly on the nape of her neck, appeared in the 24th Judicial District Court
Tuesday morning, for a hearing sought by public defender Raul Guerra,
to test whether police have enough evidence to continue holding her in
jail. She did not testify.

After hearing testimony from two detectives, Commissioner Patricia
Joyce found police have sufficient evidence to continue holding her on
both charges. Police think Sanchez and Terry Speaks,
41, who was described during the hearing as her husband, killed
Lockhart on June 6, 2012, and obstructed justice by cutting up her body
in an effort to eliminate evidence.

Police say Lockhart, 22, who was a dancer at Temptations Gentlemen's
Club, accepted an offer from Sanchez and Speaks, on June 6, 2012, to
leave with them for a party or sex in exchange for money. Most of
Lockhart's body parts were found along the Mississippi Gulf Coast the
following day.

Sanchez and Speaks have been suspects since shortly after Lockhart's
remains were found. But Kenner police, who took over the investigation
from the Hancock County, Miss., Sheriff's Office, booked Sanchez earlier
this month. Speaks serving a 32-month sentence at the Otisville, N.Y., Federal Correctional Institute, for failing to register as a sex offender
in Louisiana after moving from North Carolina. He was convicted in 2003
of sex with a minor, and is scheduled to be released in October. He has
not been booked in Lockhart's murder but is a suspect.

Specific details

It was at the Otisville facility that two inmates volunteered that Speaks made incriminating statements,
Kenner police Detective David Stromeyer testified. Neither inmate was
identified, but both are seeking deals with the government in exchange
for their information, detectives said. One provided "generic"
information, while the second one gave specific details on what Speaks
allegedly said, Stromeyer testified.

The informants told authorities that Speaks said he and his wife
picked up a stripper at a Bourbon Street club, and used drugs and
alcohol as they drove to a place near an airport, Stromeyer said. At the
time Lockhart was killed, Sanchez and Speaks lived in a Connecticut
Avenue home near Louis Armstrong International Airport, detectives said.

Speaks told one of the inmates that Sanchez and the victim got into a
fight, "and that the female ended up dead," Stromeyer testified.

The inmate did not say who killed Lockhart. She died from a single
stab wound to her chest, Hancock County Detective Steve Saucier
testified.

Neither Sanchez nor Speaks has given statements to police
incriminating themselves or each other, the detectives said. Sanchez
acknowledged she and Speaks were at the club, and that they left the
club. She remembered nothing after that, Saucier testified.

Speaks offered a similar statement, including that he was with
Sanchez all evening, the detective testified. "He remembers everything
up to the point of getting into the vehicle when they left the French
Quarter that night," Saucier testified.

'Cleaned up the mess'

However, after FBI agents and Hancock County detectives interviewed
Speaks at the New York prison last year, Speaks wrote an email to
Sanchez on the night of July 5, Stromeyer testified. The content was
circumstantial but highly suggestive, and it included Speaks angrily
telling Sanchez that he "cleaned up the mess," but she was not jailed,
that their use of drugs as an excuse would not work, and that more than
one person's bodily fluids were in her panties. He appeared to threaten
he would turn her in.

In another email, Speaks told Sanchez "the night in question was a very special night for them," Stromeyer said.

The detective also said authorities have other suspects. He did not elaborate.

The detectives conceded Tuesday that they have no physical evidence,
including DNA, that links Sanchez to Lockhart. Detectives said the FBI
is still analyzing evidence at its laboratory in Quantico, Va., and
Jefferson Parish Assistant District Attorney Doug Freese said the
investigation is ongoing.

Detectives found evidence that Sanchez's car was cleansed, Saucier
said. From the Connecticut Avenue home in Kenner, detectives seized a
rope, videos, a video camera, a mattress and drain pipes. The detectives
said a substance that might be blood was found on a mattress,
floorboards and an electrical outlet in a bedroom. Saucier said he knows
of "at least three knives and one sword" that also are undergoing
testing by the FBI.

'Make rent'

Sanchez and Speaks had gone to two French Quarter gentlemen's clubs,
asking numerous dancers to leave with them, Saucier testified. "Everyone
they asked declined their offer," Saucier testified.

Sanchez and Speaks found Lockhart, who told coworkers before leaving
she was going "to go work a private party not sanctioned by the club,"
Saucier testified. She also told coworkers "that she was going to,
quote, 'make rent,'" Saucier testified, suggesting she was going to earn
money.

The trio left the club at 2:05 a.m., Saucier testified. Surveillance
cameras at two other locations in the French Quarter captured images of
Lockhart accompanied by Sanchez and Speaks, Saucier testified.

About 23 minutes later, Sanchez's green Chevrolet Lumina was at
Veterans Memorial and Williams boulevards in Kenner, according to data
police obtained from a license plate recognition camera at the
intersection, Saucier testified.

At 10 a.m., about eight hours after leaving Bourbon Streets, Speaks
dropped Sanchez off at her job, Saucier testified, citing statements
from Sanchez's coworkers. "They both appeared tired, dirty, and they
smelled really bad," Saucier said.

At 6 p.m., that evening, Speaks picked up Sanchez from her job.
Speaks also dropped off his dog with a coworker, Saucier testified.
Sanchez's car then crossed the state line into Mississippi on Interstate
10 at 9:34 p.m., and crossed back into Louisiana on I-10 at 11:51 p.m.,
Saucier said, citing license plate recognition cameras.

Authorities
speculate that Jaren Lockhart's killers put her dismembered remains
into the waters along the Mississippi Gulf Coast somewhere between the
Bay St. Louis Bridge and Long Beach, Miss. The bridge is located about
70 miles from Kenner. Investigators used license-plate recognition
cameras to track suspect Margaret Sanchez's vehicle from her Kenner home
to the Mississippi state line less than 20 hours after Lockhart was
last seen with Sanchez and suspect Terry Speaks.

He said Speaks and Sanchez could have driven the route to Long Beach
within the time frame the license plate cameras marked their entry and
exit from Mississippi on I-10.

On June 7, 2012, beach restoration workers found the torso on Bay St.
Louis' shore, Saucier testified. Her head was severed, as were her legs
at the hips and her arms at the elbows, the detective said. Skin also
was removed, from areas of the body matching where Lockhart had tattoos,
Saucier testified. Police suspect the killers were trying to hide the
victim's identity, which is the basis of Sanchez's obstruction of
justice charge.

Other body parts washed up between Long Beach and Pass Christian, the
detective testified. The arms were not found. Detectives tracked the
body parts to Lockhart, because they fit the description that her
boyfriend provided when he filed a missing person's report on June 6,
Saucier testified. DNA confirmed the identity, he said.

Using tidal information used by University of Southern Mississippi
marine biologists, detectives believe the torso was tossed from the Bay
St. Louis Bridge, and the other body parts were tossed into the Gulf
near Long Beach and Pass Christian, Saucier testified. Items of
Lockhart's clothing also were found in Mississippi, he said.

Questioned by Guerra, the public defender, Saucier said that opiates
were found in Lockhart's remains through toxicology tests done during
the autopsy, but the pathologist ruled out a fatal overdose. Police
sought to determine her location through her cell phone, but it was
turned off "immediately prior to arriving in Kenner," Saucier testified.

Gabrielle Bluestone

Police
say a 21-year-old woman dressed as a nurse walked into a Quebec nursery
ward and left with Victoria, a six-pound, 16-hour-old baby.

Mother
Mélissa McMahon told police that the fake nurse took the baby from her
arms, saying she needed to be weighed. McMahon says she realized within
minutes that something was off, but she was too late.

Security cameras caught the fake nurse driving away in a Toyota Yaris with a "Baby On Board" sign.

A man accused of robbing an eastern New Orleans
cellphone store at gunpoint in 2013 pleaded guilty on Wednesday (May
28) and received a 30-year prison sentence, according to a press release
from the Orleans Parish District Attorney's Office.

Prosecutors had just rested their case inside Orleans Parish District
Judge Camille Buras' courtroom when Ronnie McMaster, 20, told the judge
he was ready to plead guilty to the charges he was facing, the
statement said

McMaster, who was charged with one count of armed robbery with a
firearm and one count of being a felon in possession of a firearm, had
been offered a 25-year deal by prosecutors before the trial began, but
declined, claiming there was not enough evidence to convict him.

Police said on April 16, 2103, a masked and hooded McMaster stormed a Boost Mobile store in the 5700 block of Crowder Boulevard,
armed with a .380 handgun. Prosecutors said McMaster chased down a
store employee and demanded that he hand over all his cash. The employee
complied, and McMaster fled the scene with $163 and a cellphone.

Much of the robbery was caught on tape, the majority of which was shown to a jury on Wednesday.

Police arrested McMaster the same day, after finding him hiding on
the rooftop of a nearby building with the cash and victim's cellphone in
his possession. He had dropped the gun used in the robbery behind a
fence nearby, the statement said.

McMaster, who was on probation for burglarizing his mother's home in
2012, would have faced a minimum 49-year sentence if he had been
sentenced under the habitual offender law, the statement said. As part
of the plea agreement, prosecutors agreed not to file a multiple bill
with the stipulation that McMaster be sentenced to no less than 30
years. He will receive credit for time served.

District Attorney Leon Cannizzaro called the case "emblematic" of crime in New Orleans.

"This defendant was engaging in an escalating pattern of violent
activity. Because of past mismanagement of the criminal justice system,
he believed that either we would be unwilling to prosecute or that he
could not be convicted. Unfortunately, he learned a little too late
that today's system is far more aggressive and far less tolerant of
violent crime."

Zachary Gibson, 19, sprayed bullets into a crowd of at least 150
people gathered to celebrate a high school graduation, New Orleans
police say. The boy who died, Tremaine Robertson, 15, was the brother of
the graduate being feted.

Police said the shooting followed an argument at the party.

Several witnesses told police the gunman was wearing a red
short-sleeved T-shirt and ran away from the scene, according to a New
Orleans Police Department arrest warrant. During the investigation, NOPD
homicide Detective Barret Morton said he found photographs of Gibson at
the party wearing a red short-sleeved T-shirt, the warrant says.

The gunfire erupted shortly before midnight Friday (May 23), at a
single-family house in the 6200 block of Eads Street during a party for
JeShan Vail, 18, who just graduated from George Washington Carver High
School. He said Robertson was an "innocent bystander."

Robertson was visiting from Spring, Texas, where his family moved to
after Hurricane Katrina. Part of the reason his family stayed away was
due to Robertson's mother's concerns about crime in New Orleans, Vail
told a reporter on Saturday.

High school graduate dismayed by violence at his party George
Washington Carver Senior High 2014 graduate JeShan Vail was hoping to
celebrate his accomplishment by having a party shared with friends and
family. Instead the party turned violent when several people were shot
including one fatality.

Robertson, who was about to enter 11th grade, liked basketball and fashion.

Bullets struck and wounded four women, ages 19 to 30, and three men,
ages 22 to 25, police said. The 19-year-old underwent surgery, according
to police. The others were in stable condition right away.

Gibson was picked up by NOPD's violent offenders warrants squad at
7:30 a.m. Wednesday in the 2400 block of Sixth Street, near his listed
address.

He booked into Orleans Parish Prison on a count of second-degree
murder. Police spokesman Officer Frank Robertson III said he would
additionally be booked soon with seven counts of attempted second-degree
murder.

Magistrate Commissioner Robert Blackburn set Gibson's bond at $750,000 at an afternoon hearing.

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